ACCRE Staff

Hunter Hagewood

Hunter Hagewood is currently Interim Executive Director and Director of Operations. Prior to joining ACCRE, Hunter worked for over 10 years in the private sector, including director-level roles at Equian and Informatics Corporation of America. Hunter was also the founder and CTO of Nevoa Networks, one of the first commercially available cloud storage providers. Hunter has a master’s in information and library science from University of Tennessee and a bachelor’s in computer information systems from Lipscomb University.

Alan Tackett

Dr. Alan Tackett, our Technical Director, is the lead developer of LStore, a highly scalable filesystem that is used in production for the CMS Tier 2 project. As the technical director of ACCRE, Alan draws from his deep expertise in all things storage, networking, and computing to help guide and architect various aspects of the ACCRE environment. Alan has been with ACCRE since its inception in 2001.

Lindsey Fox

Lindsey is Director of Research Services, Facilitation and Outreach. Her responsibilities include helping to produce, manage, and implement programs and services geared to increase the success and support of research on campus. She leads outreach efforts to Vanderbilt University researchers to enhance and expand Research IT for the campus while ensuring ACCRE managed resources meet the needs of the demanding research landscape. Lindsey holds an M.S. in Engineering Science with an emphasis in Geology from the University of Mississippi and is also wrapping up a Master of Information Technology degree at Virginia Tech.

Patrick Bembry

Patrick Bembry is ACCRE’s Business Manager, responsible for the financial oversight of the Center. He manages the core’s billing, core-unit pricing, budget forecasting, asset management, and the purchase of capital equipment and software licenses. Patrick is a long-time Vanderbilt employee with multi-department experience in payroll administration, accounting, human resources, and sponsored research. When he isn’t at ACCRE Patrick enjoys working with his hands and learning new DIY skills, from drywall work to plumbing, and applying these skills to the renovation of his fifties-era house.

Eric Appelt

Dr. Eric Appelt is an Associate Director and Site Reliability Engineer for ACCRE.

Michael McAllister

Michael McAllister is ACCRE’s Research Facilitator, responsible for onboarding new groups, ACCRE resource consultations, and outreach to stakeholders. Michael joined ACCRE in 2022 after spending more than 7 years in technical support and relationship management with VUIT. More than anything, he enjoys connecting with ACCRE customers and helping drive the University research mission forward. When he is not assisting customers at ACCRE, Michael enjoys spending time with family, pretending to be a good golfer, and kayaking the streams and rivers of middle Tennessee.

Matthew Heller

Matt is a graduate of Vanderbilt’s Engineering program and in fact he first worked for ACCRE as an intern in his undergraduate days prior to joining the team in a software developer position in 2009. Matt wears many hats, among them he is the lead network engineer and the primary for the ACCRE tape backup service. He also is involved in developing the LStore distributed storage system software and in automating system provisioning, management, and monitoring. When he can find the time he enjoys cooking, hiking, photography, and DIY projects ranging from electronics to woodworking.

Mathew Binkley

Mat has a BS in Physics from Austin Peay State University and four years studying black holes in grad school at Wake Forest. He also has a MBA, but hopes you’ll overlook it and like him anyway. He enjoys science, gardening, hiking, running, and dabbling in politics against his better judgement.

Scott Goethals

Scott Goethals is a graduate from Eastern Michigan University with a degree in Information Assurance. Prior to joining the ACCRE team he has worked for several health care and I.T. companies. He joins ACCRE to bring his background in network security and system administration to help support the ACCRE cluster. When not at work Scott enjoys spending time with his wife and dogs.

Sai Medury

Sai Medury joined ACCRE in Nov 2021. He helps configure, test, and troubleshoot systems at ACCRE. He also works closely with the Centre for Structural Biology (CSB) and helps maintain CSB systems at ACCRE. He is currently completing his Ph.D. in Computational Science from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and has a Master of Software Engineering from Auburn University. In his spare time, Sai enjoys watching football and playing Pokemon Go.

Prasanna Koirala

Prasanna Koirala joined ACCRE as a Research Software Engineer in April 2022. Prior to joining ACCRE, Prasanna worked for three years in the higher education sector as a part of the NASA-IMPACT Research Lab at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, both as a student and a full-time employee. Additionally, Prasanna has more than three years of experience in the software engineering sector. His expertise lies in software engineering, full-stack development, cloud engineering, and machine learning implementations. Prasanna holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Pulchowk Campus, Tribhuvan University, Nepal. In his free time, Prasanna enjoys singing, hiking, and traveling.

Satkar Dhakal

Satkar joined ACCRE in February 2023 as a research software engineer.  He completed his master’s degree in computer science from the University of Alabama in Huntsville while working as a Graduate Research Assistant for NASA IMPACT.  His main responsibilities at ACCRE includes developing user facing interfaces to the cluster, technical consultation, and refactoring codebase to parallelize and optimize the high-performance computing workload. Beyond the realm of technology, Satkar finds joy in activities such as kayaking, hiking, 3D printing, and playing guitar.

Samuel Ninchritz

Samuel Ninchritz joined ACCRE in June 2022 as a system administrator and was then promoted to Senior Storage System Admin. Prior to joining ACCRE, Samuel received certifications for electronic repair and basic networking through the Army. Afterwards, he went on to receive his A.A.S. in cybersecurity. In his free time, Sam enjoys long walks on the beach.

Andrew Melo

Dr. Andrew Melo joined ACCRE in 2016 after the completion of his PhD in Physics at Vanderbilt University. His doctoral thesis was performed with the CMS experiment at CERN, where he performed a search for supersymmetry. He is currently the lead administrator of the CMS Tier-2 site at Vanderbilt as well as the U.S. CMS facilities co-manager, responsible for the national CMS computing infrastructure. He is also responsible for ACCRE's big data infrastructure and is developing a prototype Machine Learning Training Facility.

Troy Broadrick

Troy is an Associate Storage Systems Administrator for ACCRE. Troy earned his bachelor's degree from Midwestern State University and has worked with Vanderbilt University for the past six years. Before joining ACCRE, he served as a Lead Technical Support Specialist for the VUIT Tech Hub, where he helped launch the university’s TeamDynamix platform and wrote much of the initial knowledge base. He got his start on Macs at age five but has since made himself at home across Windows and Linux systems. Troy enjoys hiking, wood carving, reading, and gaming—especially Secret of Mana. With his love of trails, trees, and hand tools, he’s pretty much a druid—so it’s no surprise his favorite thing about Vanderbilt is all the trees. He’s married, and his teenage progeny is currently studying at Loyola University Chicago.

Thomas Goff

Thomas is a Senior Application Developer and DevOps Engineer ACCRE. Thomas earned his master's degree in computer science from Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro while working as a Graduate Teaching Assistant teaching undergraduate mathematics, and is currently wrapping up a PhD in Computational and Data Science. Prior to joining ACCRE, Thomas worked as the lead HPC systems engineer at Middle Tennessee State University for Computational and Data Science. Prior to his career in academics, he served as a KC-130 aircraft mechanic in the United States Marine Corps. Beyond the realm of technology, Thomas enjoys playing guitar and coaching competitive esports.

Sara Frederick

Alex May

🌹 In loving memory of

Warren Eckstein

January 27, 1960 - October 31, 2025

Warren had been active in Information Technology since his first experience with the mainframe in Ames, Iowa in the mid-1970s. He served in the United States Navy as a Sonar Technician, worked in geo-seismic exploration across the eastern United States, and attended The University of Alabama, where he studied Television and Film Communications, Graphic Design, and English.

In 1996, Warren was instrumental in bringing Internet access to Pickens County, Alabama. In 2006, he joined Vanderbilt University as a Network Operations Center Analyst, helping ensure the stability and growth of the data center where ACCRE resides. In 2016, he became a system administrator at ACCRE, where he continued to dedicate himself to keeping ACCRE’s systems running smoothly.

Warren passed away, leaving behind a legacy of service, technical expertise, and a deep commitment to the communities and institutions he supported.